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3 years 4 months ago #216483 by prodrive
Replied by prodrive on topic Need a few good yarns
New meaning to the word "Stick" welder Pauly?

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3 years 4 months ago #216485 by Lang
Replied by Lang on topic Need a few good yarns
Two more from USA

A good rule of the road is not to look directly into lights:
My trucking days were s***, but I got some good stories from them. Going south on I-75 in Georgia at around three a.m., I see this bright light maybe about two miles behind me. Not only is it super-bright, but it is on the interstate and it is HAULING A**. It’s big too, and it’s moving faster than anything I think I’d ever seen. Now, earlier that day I had called the guy who taught me how to drive, and he is really, really superstitious about life on the road. He would tell me stories about how a green apparition chased him in Florida when he was pulling too many miles, all kinds of stuff. I was already spooked from that conversation earlier, so looking into my mirror and seeing this giant light FLYING towards me made my a**h*** clench onto the seat. This thing closes the distance between us and FLIES past me, probably doing around 120. I had the window down and as it went past me, I felt this massive amount of HEAT. When it passed me, I could finally tell what it was!

Get this.

It was a hay hauler, a truck that hauls a trailer designed for hay, and the ENTIRE LOAD OF HAY IN THE BACK WAS ABLAZE.

I jumped in the CB and screamed “DRIVER, YOUR TRAILER IS ON FIRE!!!” The driver comes back in a surprisingly calm voice with, “I know, I’m just letting it burn off. I figure if I go fast enough, I can keep my cab from getting burned.”

–psychopathenator

Finally, the modifications some owner/operators make to their big rigs make for great stories:
My uncle was a long haul trucker back in the 90s (mainly did international runs from Canada down into the US and back to Canada) with a pretty nice new Kenworth that had one of those maximum size sleepers on it. It had a built in toilet and the works. He decided that the small tank that came with the toilet was a pain in the a** to have to empty so frequently so he converted half of his passenger side diesel tank into a septic tank.

A few weeks after converting his tank he happened to pull in at a truck stop somewhere in the States and parked for the night after driving longer then he should have. When he woke up at 5AM with the dawn just starting to get bright he climbed out to see beside his truck something that makes him laugh every time he tells the story.

On the ground on the right side of his truck was a 5 gallon jerry can, a siphon hose with one end in his tank and the other laying on the ground; puddle of puke and some puke foot prints; another few feet away, puddle of puke; another few feet away another puddle of puke.

Some dumb SOB tried to siphon his septic tank in the middle of the night.
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3 years 4 months ago - 3 years 4 months ago #216490 by Southbound
Replied by Southbound on topic Need a few good yarns
Great story with a picture too, thanks for sharing Mrs.
Was wondering why you bought the Federal? And what engine is in it now?
I knew a bloke who had a similar prime mover in the 70's to drag his D7 around, was a Cummins engine and progress was steady so must have been very low geared.

I'd rather have tools that I don't need, than not have the tools I do need.
Last edit: 3 years 4 months ago by Southbound.

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3 years 4 months ago #216495 by cobbadog
Replied by cobbadog on topic Need a few good yarns
Years back I used to ride a small Kawasaki bike to and from work. I had it for a couple of years and I could never sort out the poor starting ability first thing in the morning to the point that my neighbour wanted to buy the battery out of the bike because it could turn that engine over for ages before sparking to life. Once running you could stop it and tough the button and away it went.
Anyway one morning I headed off to town and work and I was well over the 100 kph limit leaning into the bends when suddenly the handle bars snapped in half inbetween the rubber mounts. This caused the bars to come back towards me and actually start to cross over. This also menat I was from almost full throttle and gain pace to throttle fully off, arms crossed, leaning right ove in a bend and sucking in from the ring gear to stay on board.
I did manage to save it and not hit the deck, rode it home and grabbed the car.

Cheers Cobba & Cobbarette
Coopernook, The Centre of our Universe
Working on more play time.

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3 years 4 months ago #216497 by Mrsmackpaul
Replied by Mrsmackpaul on topic Need a few good yarns
Cars are so much more user friendly to my way of looking at things

Motor bikes only need to be able to out run the fastest cow lol

Paul

Your better to die trying than live on your knees begging
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3 years 4 months ago #216508 by cobbadog
Replied by cobbadog on topic Need a few good yarns
I had to pick my feet up to the fuel tank once to stop being tagged by a black snake who was obviously very cranky as he started to stand up when he knew what was about to happen.

Cheers Cobba & Cobbarette
Coopernook, The Centre of our Universe
Working on more play time.

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3 years 4 months ago #216693 by overlander
Replied by overlander on topic Need a few good yarns
Tonga is the name of the base camp in Zaire [now Democratic republic of Congo] where you can trek from to see chimpanzees in the wild. I'd never been there so on this one particular trip I penciled in a body swerve. I was on a 7 week Gorillas and Game parks trip in my M.A.N- "Dirty Cow" with a trainee- Kiwi fella- Monks who also ended up spending a lot more time in Africa than he had planned. Anyways, we'd been having a cracking time so I figured the body swerve was justified for the good of the group. We were on our way south to Goma after visiting the Ruwenzoris and the pygmies at Mt Hoyo so I stopped at Butembo to do a good shop-up as there wasn't a lot else until Rutshuru and that was just a main street town. With the M.A.N I used to drive with the roof folded back near every day weather permitting so in Butembo I park up and then I'd stand on the drivers' seat to tune the fans where the market was and so on and so forth and this kiwi fella- Chris Anderson- I'll never forget his name- dropped this rip-shnorter of a fart and he cleared the back of the truck- fans were bailing out and I was dry retching something chronic. So yeah, we get the shopping done and trundle on our way. I managed to get a heap of live chooks before the turn off to Tonga so that was a bonus buy and we stuffed them in the rubbish bucket I had in the back of the truck. When we got to the base camp we set up camp then grabbed the bucket of chooks to dispatch,pluck and gut- one of the girls came along to help -we'd keep the head and guts for the public- they like eating that stuff all the more so when it's free but then we find out a couple of the chooks at the bottom of the bucket had croaked it- they still bled when I lopped their heads off so all good in my books and we had the help swear she wouldn't tell the others. In the mean time others had cleaned the spit pole, set up the sand ladders and gotten the charcoal going- they knew the form- we'd already done a pig spit and at Mutsora where they did the Ruwenzori climb from we did a hangi with a pig- the public couldn't get over the fact that we'd just bought a pig and then chucked it in the ground- Maori girl Brenda was in charge of that. So we get the chooks spinning knowing where the 2 are that had snuffed it and got on the hooligan juice. It was also not uncommon to have passengers that liked a bit of 'herb' to relax themselves and yeah they'd gotten hold of some top shelf gear and were booking off the planet- we had them wear a cabbage leaf on their head to baste the chooks which caused some humour. By the time it came to eating the girl that helped pluck and gut looked after Monks and myself when quartering the chooks. Bloody good feed that night. And yeah, they all saw chimps in the wild- I think it cost $50 a head, CASH. I reckon I was very fortunate to be mucking around in Africa all those years ago as these days a lot of places I visited would not be safe to visit now. Jeez we had a good trip and Monks scored a driving job- top of the class.
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3 years 2 months ago #217526 by overlander
Replied by overlander on topic Need a few good yarns
On my first 'Nile' trip [Egypt-Sudan-Eritrea-Etiopia-Kenya] I had a 1617 day cab Merc with a "knock-over' 4/8 gearbox and the linkages worked just fine Lang. Anyways, I wasn't comfortable with the engine temperature gauge reading a wee bit on the high side and I had no time to do anything about it until I got to Khartoum. The boss said to use the Blue Nile Yacht Club to camp at in Khartoum but the only clue of where it was being that it was on the Nile somewhere. The only map I had was in a Lonely Planet guide so I had a good drive around the city looking for the gaff. Eventually I found it and park up to spend a few days here and dig out the spare radiator the boss had under the false floors in the back of the truck along with an engine, gearbox, diff centre and all the other parts from another 1617 he'd cut up. Then to find the spare radiator was non-compatible - bugga, so I cleaned and re-installed the radiator I wanted to replace and kept an eagle eye on the temp gauge when driving. Sudan had then a lot of police checks which sucked up a lot of time when they translated my passenger list written in English to Arabic and I had the same deal with the Eritrean immigration and I had to pronounce everyone's names so the official could write down his version of the name I just said- took trucking hours. Eritrea then was a gold mine if you were a scrap metal merchant- wrecked military tanks, trucks, APC's- you name it - it was everywhere so I hatch a plan to look for compatible radiator hoses so I could then fit my spare radiator. I find on the Soviet tanks the engine has a donkey dick radiator hose so I help myself to one. Hmmmm not a good move- the public don't like what I did and I get escorted into a big town named Barentu and to the police station where I had to explain why I 'stole' the hose, which I did as best I could being that we had a bit of a language barrier here and ended up surrendering the hose- bugga. Eritrea then was a fabulous place to visit- very friendly to Australians thanks to Fred Hollows, safe as houses to walk around at night getting on the hooligan juice and reasonable prices. So I defer my radiator problem until Addis Abeba - here I stayed at the very stylie 'Bel Air' Hotel where rooms could be rented by the hour for some reason- very busy place- again finding the place with no street directory was a bit of a mission but you just sort of wing it and #$@% me I found it. The woman on reception looked like a bulldog chewing wasps and had a completely different attitude towards visitors compared to the Eritreans but I wasn't going to go looking for another place to stay as I wanted to go looking for the Merc dealership which I found and you beauty there are 2 German blokes running the show and we go for a test drive but that day the engine temp stayed normal- bugga, so they couldn't offer much help. So I went on a shopping safari looking for a road map of Addis so I could find my way out and bingo, I found one. I got to Kenya OK and in Nairobbery I parked up the Merc and cranked up my day cab Freighter for the run to Jo-burg. Later on down the track it was discovered the Merc engine had a cracked block which I found odd as the engine wasn't loosing any coolant/water so the spare engine in the back of the truck was hauled out and put into action. When I got to the beach south of Mombasa to start the next leg of the trip Wifey dog was there to greet me and couldn't wait to get back on the road- I'd left her at the campsite in Harare and when I was in Asmera I sent her a post card advising my arrival date at the beach and she hitched a ride with Low-Cal Al in his Absolute Africa truck- geez she was happy to see me- sorta gives you a warm fuzzy feeling eh. Anyways, Happy New Year to all and stayed tuned.
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